Not too bad of a start to a successful Hitman series. Game-design makes it hard to play. Might be worth it for fans.
After a short introductory level you enter your first campaign, the Triad Gang War (also seen on one of the campaigns for Contracts). The missions at first are short and to the point, such as use the sniper rifle to kill a target, and find a way to sneak a bomb onto a limo without getting caught, but the final mission of the campaign is longer and might be a bit confusing as to what to do if you are not paying attention (where you have to find a statue and trade it for information). Eventually you must assassinate Lee Hong (your primary target) and escape to end the level.
Your next campaign takes place in a Columbian jungle, and for some reason was not carried over to the Contracts game, so fans who haven't played Codename 47 might find it pretty fun. You will get the opportunity to use a mini-gun in the last level, although it slows you down quite a bit. There will be a lot more firefights and using tree-trunks as cover throughout the several missions until you reach Pablo Ochoa (a Scarface wannabe with a lot of cocaine on his desk and likes to talk about his little friend that is high-powered machine gun), at the same time wasting all of his guards, makes for a fun and challenging mission.
The third campaign (more like one big level) takes place at a hotel holding a world summit (seen also in Contracts) where you must find a chemical weapon and kill the smuggler Frantz Fuchs. The mission is entirely stealth-oriented and initially you won't be able to carry any weapons except for the fiber-wire. The more frustrating part of the mission is bypassing the multitude of metal detectors but does give you a few options disguising yourself and eliminating your target.
The fourth campaign will take place in Rotterdam where you must eliminate a weapons-dealer, Arkadij Jegorov. This campaign in Contracts seemed to be quite different but held the same objectives where you will also have to find and disarm a nuke. Getting to the target on this version was sometimes challenging as there are snipers on rooftops and would be easily alerted to your activities when attempting to silently kill someone on the ground. Overall, the Rotterdam campaign is fun to play, and the shootouts are better than the Contracts version.
The final mission is located in a mental hospital where you must assassinate a Dr. Kovacs (who works for Professor Ort-Meyer, your creator). This will be new to those who haven't played Codename 47 but might recognize it as what would be the prequel to the first mission in Contracts (where you begin by escaping the carnage you had reaped on the hospital). The first part of the mission can be difficult where you will have to be careful not to arouse the suspicion of a SWAT team. At one point you will have to run away or fight many of them. When you reach a certain laboratory section you will have another challenge of fighting ten of your clones who will come at you relentlessly that seem to go down only by shooting them in the head.
Overall, Codename 47 is a good game though might feel somewhat restrictive compared to the other Hitman games; such as, some weapons do not make sense to purchase for certain missions, and not being able to quicksave makes for a more frustrating game. There are a lot of good shootouts, and enemies fly backwards in ragdoll fashion, that make the Hitman series into the fun bloodfests that they became famous for. This is not the best in series but for those who are fans of the other games and don't mind revisiting some missions already seen in Contracts and are patient with the lame checkpoint saving, then it's worth playing to experience the new missions and fills in more detail to the background of 47. Still a fun game and has the right price, some used copies sell for $.01 on Amazon.